Did Jet Lag Contribute to Famed Flight Attendant Outburst?

You’ve heard the story a million times now. Flight attendant gets fed up with passengers, curses them out on the planes PA system, quits job, grabs beers, opens hatch and slides down the emergency chute.

The theatric outburst elevated Steven Slater from anonymous flight attendant to working class hero overnight. He did exactly what everyone dreams of doing but would never dare to carry out: an epic cathartic release of all his job-related frustrations.

He’s been awarded with celebrity status, countless media interviews and eventually the inevitable book deal. Oh, and he’s charged with a federal felony.



What would make someone commit high-profile career suicide and risk going to prison? Exhaustion and jet lag must have contributed.

Jobs at commercial airline are among the worst for sleep. Most flight attendants are familiar with the dreaded rotating shift. Flight attendants are constantly switching shifts and making quick turnarounds. The most desired, exotic gig of working on international flights is the worst of all. International duty means shifts up to 18 hours long and constant battles against jet lag.

Living out of a suitcase doesn’t help either. A constantly changing sleep environment can be difficult even when staying in high-end hotel rooms.

Many of the stresses of the job are inescapable, such as flight delays and rude passengers. Flight attendants do have some degree of control over their sleeping patterns.

Sleep hygiene isn’t just for home. Try to bring your bedtime ritual with you on the road. If you’re a high strung flight attendant try taking a bath a couple hours before bed. Or pack your favorite yoga DVD and practice in your hotel room.

If you’re only staying in the time zone for a short time act as if you never left and sleep when people in your home time zone sleep.

Lengthier stays in other time zones require more preparation. Try gradually adjusting your sleep schedule starting about a week in advance. Go to bed a half hour earlier or later every night. Once you arrive in your destination use light therapy and try to stay awake until the late evening. It’s up to you to determine which approach to jet lag you’ll want to take.

One last piece of advice, take it easy with crew parties at the hotel. Alcohol will only fuel the effects of jet lag.

Body Clock Breakthrough Could Lead to Magic Jet Lag Pill

Jumping time zones won’t be so jarring if the findings from a new study pan out. Researchers have pinned down the hormone responsible for regulating circadian rhythms.

This breakthrough could lead to new treatments for jet lag. A hormone supplement in the form of a pill in theory could readjust the human body’s circadian rhythms.
A team of German researchers tested the treatment on lab mice.

The medication metyrapone was able to adjust hormone levels affecting their sleep-wake cycle.

Such a treatment could have a tremendous health benefit for frequent business travelers and rotating shift workers. It’s unknown whether a treatment to rapidly readjust the body clock would be more beneficial than the slower naturally occuring adjustments.

Circadian rhythm sleep disorders such as jet lag have been linked to increased health risks including breast cancer, heart disease and depression.

Planning ahead by slowly adjusting sleeping and waking hours before a trip may reduce the effects of jet lag. Rest periods, exercise and light therapy may also help.

Celtics Getting Sleep for the NBA Season

Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers is looking for any advantage that will help his team return to the NBA Finals this year. After winning the 2008 NBA Title, the Celtics were ousted from the 2009 playoffs by the Orlando Magic.

This season the Celtics get All-Star forward Kevin Garnett back from a knee injury. They’re also getting more sleep.

The team is being advised by Harvard sleep researcher Dr. Charles Czeisler. As a result they’re practicing at noon instead of early in the morning. And they’re no longer holding morning shootarounds on game days.

“I think they’re fresh,” Rivers told the Boston Globe. “I think we’ve had better practices.”

The goal is to help the players avoid the sleep deprivation that is rampant in the NBA. The 82-game regular season can be a brutal grind.

Play a late game; fly deep into the night to the next city on the schedule; fight off jet lag for a morning practice. Do it all over again.

As teams criss-cross the country sleep can get lost like checked luggage. That may be one reason why only seven of the 30 NBA teams had a winning record on the road last season.

“What we are trying to do is leverage the power of sleep,’’ said Czeisler. “As pro athletes, they spend so much time trying to practice and master the skills of the game - and sleep turns out to be a very critical part of the process…Teams that take advantage of this can really enhance their play.”

In January the Sleep Education Blog reported that the Portland Trail Blazers were getting help from Czeisler. They had finished the previous season with a mediocre 41-41 record.

The Blazers surged to a tie for first place in their division with a 54-28 record. The turnaround was fueled in part by a seven-game improvement in their road record.

The Celtics hope sleep will be a successful part of their gameplan this year. They’ll get their first test when they open the season against LeBron James and the Cavaliers in Cleveland on Tuesday night.

As for Czeisler, he hopes that we would all get more sleep.

“We are such a sleep-deprived society,’’ Czeisler said. “But the message is beginning to get through, that sleep is important for performance…It’s all about making sleep a priority.”

Learn more about how sleep improves sports performance.

Image by Daniel Go

A Melatonin Patch May Help Shift Workers Sleep During the Day

A nicotine patch is commonly used by people who want to quit smoking. A small dose of nicotine enters the blood by being absorbed through the skin.

Can this method of “transdermal delivery” be used for a sleep aid such as melatonin? A new report provides positive results from a small study.

The study involved eight people. They were given an eight-hour opportunity to sleep during the daytime. This simulated the sleep schedule of someone who performs shift work.

Some participants were given a patch with 2.1 mg of melatonin. These participants were able to sleep better during the day; their sleep was similar to natural nighttime sleep.

Melatonin is a natural hormone that is produced by the brain’s pineal gland. It is considered a “darkness signal” for your body and seems to play an important role in sleep.

Melatonin is widely available in the U.S. as a nutritional supplement. When taken at the proper time, it can produce a shift in the timing of your sleep period. Melatonin can be helpful in the treatment of shift work disorder, jet lag disorder and delayed sleep phase disorder.

But melatonin does have limitations. One is the short length of its effectiveness.

“Melatonin taken orally often wears off quickly, as it is rapidly removed from the body,” study co-author Daniel Aeschbach, PhD, said in a prepared statement.

Oral melatonin supplements may help you fall asleep during the day; but it may be difficult for you to get a full seven to eight hours of sleep.

The study found that the patch elevated melatonin levels gradually; these levels remained elevated for an extended duration.

“The peak concentration occurred in the early evening, during the latter part of the bed rest,” said Aeschbach. “We know – and shift workers know - that this is a time during which it is particularly difficult to remain asleep.”

Find sleep tips for shift workers on SleepEducation.com. Get help for a sleep problem at an AASM-accredited sleep center near you.

Overcoming Jet Lag with the Help of a Computer Program

A new study published on June 19 shows that mathematical models can be used to design effective treatment schedules for jet lag. The tools were used to create optimal schedules for bright light therapy.

The system was tested on a simulated 12-hour shift of a sleep-wake schedule. This is similar to what a person would experience when traveling from New York to Hong Kong. Simulation results show that the computer-generated treatment schedule produced faster performance recovery.

"This work shows how interventions can cut the number of days needed to adjust to a new time zone by half," study co-author Daniel Forger said in a prepared statement.

Properly timed light exposure can reset the circadian body clock to align with a new time zone. But using bright light therapy at the wrong times can be detrimental.

"Timed light exposure is a well-known method for beating jet lag,” Forger told CNN. “But few people realize that if timed incorrectly, it can actually make jet lag worse."

The authors report that it can be hard to create general rules for a treatment schedule. It may take weeks to manually design and test a treatment schedule. In contrast, the program tested in this study can produce an effective treatment schedule on a laptop computer in less than two minutes.

But it may be a while before this program is available to the public. Forger told CNN that it could be five years before the product is ready for release.

The authors also report that their system can be used for other jet lag treatments. Their next step will be to develop modules for interventions such as naps, caffeine and melatonin.

And the system may be useful in developing treatment schedules for people with shift work sleep disorder.

Go to SleepEducation.com to get more details about this study.

Read the full text of the study on the Web site of PLoS Computational Biology.

Get help for jet lag at an AASM-accredited sleep center near you.

Image by Kossy

Research Catching Up to Jet Lag

Results from a new study in Current Biology may lead to more effective treatments for jet lag and shift work sleep disorder.

Both sleep disorders involve a disruption to your body’s circadian timing system. This system regulates the timing of when you sleep and wake.

The study shows that this disruption occurs in two separate groups of neurons in the brain. It also involves two different sleep stages.

Both groups of neurons are located in the “suprachiasmatic nucleus.” This part of the brain acts as a body clock. It regulates daily functions such as body temperature, hormone levels and sleepiness.

The study found that one set of neurons is closely linked with slow wave sleep. This is also called “deep sleep.” These neurons receive light information directly from the eyes. With these light and dark signals, your pattern of deep sleep can adjust to a new schedule in a couple of days.

Another set of neurons controls rapid eye movement – or REM – sleep. Most of your dreams occur during this stage. These neurons do not receive direct light information. As a result your pattern of REM sleep can be out of sync for a week or more when you cross time zones.

The researchers exposed lab rats to an artificial light-dark schedule. This simulated a trip from Paris to New York.

They also found that the time change disrupted the normal progression of sleep stages. There was an overlap of slow wave sleep and REM sleep right after the simulated jet lag. The rats also were more likely to enter REM sleep earlier than they should.

The study helps explain why it takes the body so long to adapt to a new time zone. After a long flight it typically takes about one day per time zone for your body clock to adjust to the local time.

Researcher Horacio de la Iglesia expects that the study will have a positive impact on treatments for jet lag and shift work.

"We can go back to the treatments that are believed to be effective and see where they might be acting in the circuitry of these neuron centers, then refine them to be more effective," he said in a University of Washington statement.

Image by Kossy

Sleep & Jet Lag on Day 2 of “March Madness”

How did yesterday’s jet lag-challenged teams fare on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament?

BYU came out flat, fell behind and never caught up to Texas A&M. Cal State Northridge was the opposite. They started strong but faded late in a loss to Memphis.

As for UCLA, they’re probably relieved to have escaped with a one-point win. After crossing three time zones to play a late game, they’ll surely get some rest today on their day off.

Which teams are most likely to come out sluggish on day two of the tournament?

Utah St. gets to stay “home” in the Mountain time zone to play Marquette in Boise, Idaho. But it will be an early morning for the Aggies.

The 12:30 p.m. EDT tip-off means that the game will start at 10:30 a.m. locally. It will feel like 11:30 a.m. for sixth-seeded Marquette, which will travel from Milwaukee in the Central time zone.

Stephen F. Austin plays in the earliest game against third-seeded Syracuse. The 12:15 p.m. EDT start in Miami, Fla., will feel like 11:15 in the morning for the Lumberjacks from the state of Texas.

Oklahoma St. faces a similar challenge. The 12:25 EDT tip-off in Dayton, Ohio, will feel like 11:25 a.m. for the eighth-seeded Cowboys. Knoxville, Tenn., is in the part of the state that is in the Eastern time zone. So there will be no time change for the Volunteers.

Travelling east may be a challenge for Arizona St. Arizona does not recognize daylight saving time. So the state is currently three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time.

Temple will try to upset the sixth-seeded Sun Devils at 2:45 EDT in Miami. It will feel like an 11:45 a.m. start for Arizona St.

Cornell will take a long flight from Ithaca, N.Y., to Boise to play third-seeded Missouri. The 3 p.m. EDT start time won’t be a problem. But the long flight could take a toll on the players.

Fifth-seeded Florida St. also had to make the long trip to Boise to play Wisconsin. In addition to the flight, the Seminoles will have to deal with an unusual 9:55 p.m. EDT tip-off.

In the end, sleep can be a challenge for players on every team. The excitement and pressure of the tournament can lead to sleepless nights. The Herald Journal described how the Utah St. players struggled to sleep during their conference tournament.

And players aren’t the only ones fighting sleep loss. Fans on the East Coast have to stay up late to watch all of the 10 p.m. games.

So try to get some sleep even as you enjoy the madness.

Sleep, Jet Lag and “March Madness”

The NCAA basketball tournament tips off today at 12:20 p.m. EDT. Did you finish your bracket yet?

President Obama completed his bracket early. Surprisingly, he was extremely “conservative” with his picks.

His Elite Eight includes all four of the number-one seeds and three of the number-two seeds. His only sleeper? Third-seeded Syracuse over second-seeded Oklahoma.

If you’re still finalizing your bracket, one thing to keep in mind is jet lag. Some teams have to travel a long way to play their first game.

One example is UCLA. The Bruins have to cross three time zones to play upset-minded Virginia Commonwealth in Philadelphia, Pa., tonight.

The good news for UCLA is that the game won’t start until almost 10 p.m. EDT. They’ll be playing when their body clocks are set at a West-Coast time of 7 p.m. So it will feel like a normal tip-off time for the Bruins.

It’s the earlier, 12:30 p.m. EDT start times that can be more difficult for some players. Cal State Northridge and BYU both must cross two time zones to play opening-round games today. It will feel like a 10:30 a.m. start for the players on both teams.

Cal State Northridge plays Memphis in Kansas City, Mo. BYU plays Texas A&M in Philadelphia.

But can sleep really have an effect on a basketball game?

Just ask Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory. She has studied how sleep affects players on many of the Stanford sports teams.

One study involved six players on the men’s basketball team. Performance measures such as sprint times and free-throw shooting improved after extra sleep. So did ratings of mood and alertness.

“Sleep is a significant factor in achieving peak athletic performance,” said Mah. “Athletes across all sports can greatly benefit from extra sleep and gain the additional competitive edge to perform at their highest level.”

So sleep may be one factor that adds to the madness of this year’s tournament.

White House Photo, 3/17/09, Pete Souza

Fighting Jet Lag in the NBA

Pro football players weren’t the only athletes fighting the effects of jet lag over the weekend. The Orlando Magic, Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat all played on the road against Western Conference teams on Sunday. Only the Magic won, escaping San Antonio with a 105-98 victory over the Spurs.

Jet lag is simply a part of life in the NBA. The 82-game regular season schedule forces teams to criss-cross the country on a regular basis. Players can forget what city they’re in, much less the time zone.

But at least one team is fighting back against jet lag. The Oregonian reports that the Portland Trail Blazers are taking advice from a sleep doctor. It seems to be paying off.

Last season the Blazers were 7-14 in games that were played two or more time zones away. So far this season they are 7-2 in those games. Overall the Blazers are 22-14 and in second place in the Northwest Division.

The team is changing flight and practice schedules to let players get more sleep. Players also are encouraged to maintain a consistent sleep-wake pattern.

When playing on the East Coast, the Blazers don’t try to adapt to the new time zone. Instead they keep their body clocks set to a West Coast schedule. So a player who goes to bed at 1 a.m. in Portland will stay up until 4 a.m. in Orlando.

The Blazers will apply their new sleep strategy this week during another four-game trip east. It begins this evening with a game in the Central time zone against the Bulls.

Update (1/13/09): Blazers 109, Bulls 95

Update (1/14/09): 76ers 100, Blazers 79

Update (1/16/09): Blazers 105, Nets 99

Update (1/17/09): Bobcats 102, Blazers 97

Will Jet Lag Affect this Weekend’s NFL Playoffs?

A Bloomberg.com story takes an interesting look at this weekend’s NFL playoff games. West Coast teams Arizona and San Diego both must travel to the East Coast to play. Will jet lag affect their performance? Results from this season suggest it might.

Arizona finished 9-7 to win the NFC West Division. But the Cardinals were 0-5 in games on the East Coast. San Diego finished 8-8 to win the AFC West Division. They faired a little better on the East Coast, going 1- 3. The Chargers kept their playoff hopes alive by flying east to beat Tampa Bay 41-24 on Dec. 21.

Why would jet lag affect sports teams? Quickly crossing time zones disrupts the timing of your body clock. This can upset your sleep patterns and your daytime alertness.

It’s harder to adjust when you fly from west to east. You have to convince your body to go to sleep at night, and to become alert in the morning, hours earlier than normal. This is bad news for the Cardinals and Chargers.

Playing in the Pacific time zone, the Chargers face a three-hour change when flying to the East Coast. Until November Arizona was also three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time since the state does not observe daylight saving time. But until March the state is now on Mountain Standard Time, a two-hour difference.

A study of more than 24,000 Major League Baseball games confirmed a jet-lag trend in sports. Teams with a three-hour time-zone advantage won 60 percent of the time. Teams with only a one-or-two-hour advantage won about 52 percent of the time.

So does the East-Coast advantage make the Panthers and Steelers a lock for this weekend’s games? Not so fast. The Cardinals will play their game at 8:15 p.m. EST. This may give them a slight edge.

Research suggests that athletic performance may peak in the late afternoon. Performance may decline at night as sleepiness increases.

A 1997 study in the journal Sleep analyzed Monday Night Football games from 1970 to 1994. It looked at every one of the games that had a West Coast team playing an East Coast team.

Each of these games began around 9 p.m. Eastern time. This means that games on the West Coast began at 6 p.m. Pacific time. In games played on the East Coast, the West Coast teams played at a 6 p.m. “body-clock time.”

The study found an advantage for the West Coast teams. They won about 64 percent of the games by an average of 14.7 points per game. They even won about 56 percent of the games played on the East Coast. Results remained significant even after controlling for home-field advantage and point spread.

So the “6 p.m.-alert” Cardinals will have a clear advantage over the “8 p.m.-sleepy” Panthers? Well, not quite.

Today teams have a better understanding of jet lag’s effect on performance. It’s common for them to arrive at the host city a couple days early. This gives players time to adjust to the new time zone. In effect the Cardinals may shift their body clocks closer to the East Coast time.

So how will it all pan out? Maybe each game will simply be won by the best team.